Dead Right (29 page)

Hastily wrapping the gauze around his cut and taping it as wel as he could, Ray changed his clothes, being careful as he slipped the sleeve of his shirt over his injury. Then he shoved the box he’d taken from Madeline’s house into the back bedroom, where it couldn’t be seen. He wanted to go through it right away, make sure he had what he thought he had. But with Bubba nosing around, it’d have to wait.

“Hey, Ray?” Bubba’s voice again.

Ray felt a muscle twitch below his left eye. Bubba was annoying on a
good
day. And this was
not
a good day.

Hauling in a calming breath, he said, “Yeah?”

“You okay in there?”

He was just closing the door of the back room, but the hesitancy in Bubba’s voice gave him pause. “Sure. Why?”

“The
blood,
man. I tried to turn off the light for you and found blood al over the inside of your car. Are you hurt?”

Fuck!
That was it. Clearing his mind, Ray began walking very deliberately toward the living room. Bubba was no problem. A man that obese could die at any moment.

Too bad it’d have to be tonight.

17

I
f that’s true, you’ll go home to California tomorrow….

Hunter sat at the table he’d shared with Clay more than an hour earlier, mul ing over that statement while nursing another watered-down soda. He had half a mind to take Clay’s advice, to get out of town while he could.

But it was already too late. When he’d read Madeline’s childhood diary, the mention of Katie’s neck injury had jumped right off the page. He’d immediately connected it to the word
collar
used by whoever had cal ed Madeline’s office and left that raspy message.

Or was he grasping for something that wasn’t there?

He didn’t think so. Someone knew what had happened and was nervous about its coming out. But he felt surprisingly confident that it wasn’t Clay who’d cal ed. Clay wouldn’t have left that message on Maddy’s answering machine. He loved her, for one thing. And the Montgomerys’ position was that Grace had never been molested. Understandably, he wanted to distance his family from such a strong motive for murder.

And that meant someone else was involved. Hunter wanted to figure out who it was. But there was so much else to consider—including the memory of making love to Madeline against that tree and the desire to be with her again. He wasn’t ready for a relationship. Fal ing in love would be the ultimate betrayal of his daughter. He couldn’t love Antoinette, but could he love someone else? Find happiness elsewhere?

Besides, if Clay had kil ed Reverend Barker, the evidence he was finding suggested Barker deserved it.

How could Hunter pursue a case like that? Maybe it wasn’t right for Clay to take the law into his own hands, but being sixteen and pitted against a man as powerful as Barker, he might not have had much choice. Given the circumstances, Hunter—
anyone—
might’ve done the same thing.

Hunter didn’t want to see Madeline’s stepbrother go to prison for trying to protect his family. And he didn’t want to get emotional y involved with Madeline. Two powerful reasons to turn back. And yet, the existence of those other panties suggested Barker had hurt more than Grace.

Should the reverend be exposed for what he’d done to these women?

If there were others, why hadn’t any of them come forward?

A chil ing thought stole over Hunter:
Maybe they were all
dead…
.

Katie was a hit-and-run. Rose Lee was a suicide. They’d both been close to the reverend, and they were both gone.

So was the reverend’s first wife, who’d become obsessed with “protecting” Madeline. What if the girls had been molested, and Eliza had found out? Then the three of them would know. Which made it damned convenient for Barker that they’d al met tragedies that would silence them forever.

Hunter thumbed through the journal again.
Katie has
another sore on her neck…I found a naked lady in a
magazine in my dad’s drawer…My mother wouldn’t let me
go…

Madeline resented her mother and idolized her father.

But what if her mother
hadn’t
taken her own life? Or did it because of the helplessness she felt?

He remembered the letter Madeline had discovered in that secret compartment of Eliza’s jewelry box. She’d been begging for help, which seemed to fit. Maybe Eliza was afraid for her life, afraid for Madeline, and was trying to get away. If so, didn’t she deserve to be remembered differently?

And what about Katie’s mother and Rose Lee’s father?

They probably had no idea that the man they’d trusted to help them had likely molested, maybe raped, their daughters—repeatedly. It was even possible that Mr.

Harper blamed himself for Rose Lee’s suicide and had lived in hel for the past twenty-some years.

Who else was out there suffering because of the reverend’s actions?

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”

Hunter blinked as the booming voice penetrated his concentration. It was the bartender. Hunter was almost the last person in the place.

“It’s closing time,” the man explained. “Do you need me to find you a ride home?”

Hunter chuckled dryly. “No.” For once he’d closed down a bar stone-cold sober. “I’m fine.”

After the initial fifteen or twenty minutes, he hadn’t even craved a drink. But maybe that was because he was fighting something else; he craved the feel of Madeline’s body. Craved it more than the booze. That was why he hadn’t left the bar. He didn’t want to go back to the motel.

The blood was immediately apparent. There was a spotty trail, smeared with a few pawprints from before Madeline had locked Sophie in an upstairs bedroom.

Someone had obviously cut a hand or an arm reaching through the window to open the door. From there, the trail led to the middle of the room, then disappeared as if the intruder had wrapped something around his or her injury.

Hunter could hear the low murmur of Chief Pontiff and Officer Radcliffe, questioning Madeline in the other room.

They’d already photographed the kitchen and taken a sample of the blood. By the time he’d returned to his motel and found the message the night manager had tacked to his door, the police had been at Madeline’s for almost an hour.

If he’d fol owed his first instinct and gone back to the cottage, this might never have happened….

Stepping over the blood, he started toward the living room. He was planning to join the others, but as he passed the door to the basement, he noticed that it stood slightly ajar.

“It had to be Mike,” Madeline was saying. “Maybe he just wanted to scare me. But I don’t know anyone else who’d break in. Nothing was stolen.”

Hunter opened the basement door a little wider and flipped on the light. “Madeline?” he cal ed.

“What?”

“Has anyone been in the basement tonight?”

There was a few seconds of surprised silence. “No.

Why?”

“The door was open.”

Chief Pontiff appeared in the living room doorway. “So?

Maybe she went down there earlier and left it that way.”

“No, I didn’t.” Madeline came out, with Radcliffe a step behind. “I thought I heard someone outside before I fel asleep, so I went around to check the windows and doors. I passed the basement. I would’ve noticed because I don’t like Sophie going down there.”

Hunter squinted at a few dark spots toward the bottom of the stairs—and on the railing. “Does that look like blood to you?” he asked, pointing.

“I’l be damned,” Radcliff muttered and they al fol owed him into the basement.

“There you go,” Chief Pontiff said, crouching beside one speck. “That
is
blood.”

“What’s it doing down here?” Madeline asked.

Hunter turned in a circle, trying to see into the dark recesses. “Anyone have a flashlight?”

“I do,” Radcliffe piped up. But he handed it to Pontiff, who slowly swung the beam around the perimeter of the concrete room. When he reached the area behind the stairs, Madeline clutched Hunter’s arm.

“What is it?” he asked.

“My father’s things!”

That section looked as if it had been ransacked, but they’d been rummaging through boxes there earlier, and it hadn’t been al that neat to begin with. “What about them?”

She reached out and held the flashlight steady, directing the beam more careful y between the gaps in the wooden stairs. “The big box on top, the one we didn’t bring up yesterday is gone.”

“Why would anyone want to steal your father’s belongings, Maddy?” Pontiff asked.

Madeline sat on the couch, holding the cup of hot tea Hunter had thrust into her hands. He stood at the window, presumably watching the sunrise as he listened to them talk.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Are you sure something’s actual y been taken?”

Radcliffe sat across from her. “With al the stuff you’ve got in that basement, it could be difficult to tel . Maybe you shoved a few boxes off to the side and don’t remember doing it.”

She felt embarrassed to have had these men tramping through her private neurosis. Embarrassed and
exposed.
It was a bit like having a car accident in holey underwear.

Such an exposure was a minor consideration; she realized that. But stil , it wasn’t a pleasant experience. “I know exactly what was where. Hunter and I were just down there yesterday morning. There was a heavy box fil ed with stuff from my father’s office.”

“You haven’t had a chance to search everything careful y,” Pontiff argued. “If his stuff is shoved off to the side somewhere, maybe buried under something else, we’d be connecting this break-in to your father’s case when it might be completely unrelated.”

“Finding the Cadil ac’s probably made you nervous, Maddy,” Radcliffe added. “Maybe you’re jumping at shadows.”

Frowning, Hunter turned and folded his arms across his chest. “Shadows don’t drip blood on the floor.”

Both policemen looked up, obviously not pleased that he

—the hotshot from out of town—would presume to contradict them. “I’m not talking to you,” Radcliffe snapped, clearly irritated.

“I don’t care,” Hunter said. “Like Maddy just told you, I was down there with her yesterday morning. I saw the box she’s talking about.”

“Other than Maddy, who would see any value in her father’s personal artifacts?” Pontiff chal enged, getting quickly to his feet.

“Someone who was afraid I might go through them?”

Hunter said.

Pontiff exchanged a glance with Radcliffe. “If there was anything incriminating in those boxes, why haven’t they gone missing before?”

“Maybe whoever’s responsible for Madeline’s father’s murder wasn’t concerned until now.”

“And you’re the one who has them running scared?”

Hunter ignored Pontiff’s verbal jab. “Things have changed,” he said. “Beginning with the discovery of the Cadil ac and what was in it. This case is heating up again and it’s making someone very nervous.”

“That someone has got to be Clay,” Radcliffe said.

“My stepbrother’s the one who gave me those boxes in the first place,” Madeline retorted. “Why would he steal them back?”

“Maybe he’s just remembered there was something in one of ’em.”

“Not likely,” Hunter said.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that this ‘intruder’ knew right where to go?” Radcliffe asked.

That detail bothered Madeline, too. She didn’t show her basement to very many people. Only Hunter, Kirk, her family and Ray Harper, whom she’d hired to build some shelves a few months ago, had been down there.

“It’s not Clay,” Hunter insisted. “If there was something potential y incriminating in those boxes, he would’ve removed it long ago. Besides, he was with me last night.”

Madeline glanced up at him. Had she heard right?

“What’d you say?”

“We met for a drink,” he explained, his attention stil on Pontiff. “The waitress at Let the Good Times Rol can vouch for us.”

“What time did you leave?” Toby asked.

“Just before I came here.”

“And Clay?” he persisted.

Madeline sensed that Hunter wasn’t particularly eager to answer this question. “About an hour and a half before me.”

“That would put him in town and out on the streets
alone
right around the time of the burglary,” Pontiff said smugly.

Hunter circled the smal table separating them. “I’m tel ing you, it wasn’t Clay.”

Dislike and impatience made deep grooves on Radcliffe’s forehead. “Maybe whatever was in there was only incriminating together with the evidence from the Cadil ac—evidence he thought we’d never find.”

“No.” Hunter shook his head.

“How can you be so sure?” Radcliffe asked.

“Because Clay would have easier ways of getting to those boxes than breaking Madeline’s window in the middle of the night.”

“How do you know so much?” Pontiff asked. “You’ve been here, what, two days?”

“A lot can happen in two days.” Hunter’s light eyes flicked Madeline’s way, and she knew he was referring to what had already occurred between them.

“Besides,” Hunter added, “Clay wouldn’t risk scaring Maddy—or getting caught.”

“To my mind, that would depend on how much he wanted that box,” Radcliffe said. “Like most criminals, he cares more about himself than anyone else.”

“You’re
that
sure he’s guilty?” Hunter asked.

Radcliffe glared at him. “The whole town
knows
he’s guilty.”

A muscle twitched in Hunter’s cheek. “Is that why the police tried to beat him into a confession?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pontiff said.

“Read the reports,” Hunter responded.

“I’ve read them. There’s nothing to indicate he was struck even once.”

“Then you’re not reading very closely. You should pay special attention to the deleted parts.”

Pontiff’s face grew mottled. “Who the hel do you think you are?” he shouted. “You can’t come down here, slinging around accusations designed to make my force look bad.

Not without proof—and I’m guessing you don’t have any.”

“We could always ask Clay,” Hunter said.